Q&A with Julian Grainger, Head of Social and SEO, Unique

Unique are kindly supporting Social Media Week London as City Supporting Partner.

Unique is a full service digital media agency based in Hatton Garden. Their employees cover 20+ languages and 35+ territories in house for clients such as: Avis, ASOS, Kettle Chips and many more. Their services have won multiple awards, such as: The Data Strategy Awards 2010 and the Travel Marketing Awards 2011.

Social Media Week London HQ is currently based at Unique’s office and whilst we’ve been here, we’ve taken part in an exciting, internal social activity known as the Twitter wall (pic above): What makes you Bold, Human and Playful? #uniquetwitterwall – more images can be seen their Facebook page.

We talked to Unique’s Head of Social & SEO, Julian Grainger, about their company, future plans, Social Media Week and more.

Q: Tell us about your background with Unique and what the organisation’s major goals are for 2012/13?

I run SEO and Social for unique working alongside the Head of Planning. This means I also run our designers and copywriters and because SEO and Social change so often; I often incubate new products and services before we set them free into the client teams. Finally, it also means I spend a lot of time pitching for business. Unique’s goals are to maintain the growth in business and our history of innovation. We’ve built up some interesting frameworks on creative and media planning and execution. It has allowed us to grow the business through word of mouth of the work and a client’s past experiences with us; without having to rely on the usual avenues of league tables and cold calling to find new opportunities. It means we can concentrate on building out our creative capabilities and help our PPC, SEO, Social and Display people to work effectively with our designers and copywriters to deliver really interesting and effective work. It’s giving us that good growth and we’re now in a position to go out to the market and shout about what we are up to.

Q: When and why did Unique first get involved with SMWLDN?

This is our first time. Getting involved is partly shouting about what we are up to and part using this as a learning experience and exposing our people to other experts. SMWLDN offers a huge amount that people can learn and we want to be both teacher and pupil in this.

Q: What is a major trend you see emerging in the social media space?

Strategic legitimacy. We are now in a time and space where there are clear learning’s on why social is useful, what the benefits are to different types of brands, how we can use it to influence outcomes and how we measure value.

Q: What platforms are you really excited about?

3rd generation platforms ShortStack and Adaptly.

Shortstack means we can deliver apps quickly and frequently and it isn’t going to cost the earth to do so. The app becomes the mechanic rather than the focus of investment.

Adaptly provides a GRP metric to prove brand performance in social and allows us to tune this directly through the reach and frequency of our Facebook media buy.

Q: What are you looking forward to most at SMWLDN Sept ’12?

Our event as its innovative and risky. Meeting some new people with great ideas.

Q: Where do you see the future of social media heading?

We’ll see a slow generational disaggregation of social media audiences as the early majority discover properties more relevant to them. We’re already seeing this with Pinterest and that’s just the beginning. Facebook isn’t the natural monopoly that Google is.

Q: What are you hoping to get from SMWLDN Sept ’12?

I hope the agency becomes better known for what we offer and that our staff are inspired to push that forward.

Q: And finally, what makes Unique unique?

Our people.

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